


Growing Pains

by damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Baby's First Day At School, Domestic Fluff, Family Feels, Keith Is Sad About His Baby Growing Up, Kid Fic, M/M, Men Crying, So is Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 05:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14513451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/damnspacebois
Summary: Shiro drops his and Keith's daughter off at preschool for the first time. Keith manages to get out of it.





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> This is really just fluff, nothing too special. Thanks to Gargi, she had this idea and I just put it into words.

“Ok, bye baby! Enjoy your day!”

Without a goodbye, Yumiko is already off, keen to play dolls with a group of kids over in the far corner. Shiro falters, his throat tightening slightly before he plasters a smile back onto his face and flashes it at the sympathetic teacher’s aide who is watching him just a hint too apologetically.

“They’re all like that at this age,” she explains. “Either they’re glued to their parents or they’re running away, it’s not really anything personal.”

Shiro nods like he understands but his eyes feel suspiciously wet anyway. The aide gestures for him to follow her, and so he leaves his daughter to her fun, only checking that she hasn’t looked for him over his shoulder as he passes through the doorway. Predictably, she hasn’t even looked over at him, and he feels a pang.

The aide clears her throat when he joins her. Standing next to her makes him feel a giant amongst mortals. She’s shorter than he is, so he has to angle himself down to talk to her, which is awkward because she’s also merely a slip of a girl and it looks like he’s towering over her. To her credit, she is so intent on their conversation that she doesn’t seem to notice.

“I believe the school has your email on hand, so keep an eye out for that,” she says. “Mrs Hansen is very hands-on and she likes parental participation. And just so we’re aware, are you Yumiko’s only parent?”

“Ah, no,” replies Shiro, shaking his head. “My husband, Keith, is waiting in the carpark. He wanted to come in but he got a pretty urgent call from work, so…”

The aide’s confusion clears.

“That makes sense, we had two names on file but I wasn’t sure. I’m Amy, by the way, and I’ll be helping out on Mondays and Thursdays, so just hit me up if you have a question.”

With a thank you, Shiro takes his leave, a weigh sitting strangely in his chest. The urge to look back is strong but he resists it, although just barely. Footsteps heavy and echoing oddly in his ears, he traverses the hallways and grounds back to the carpark with a heart that twinges uncomfortably and a soul in pining.

That Yumi was growing up was hardly a  _surprise_  to Shiro. It seemed to him as if she grew a centimetre each night – that, or Shiro was shrinking. She didn’t like him tying up her shoelaces anymore and wanted to do them herself. And, sometimes, she’d use words he was unsure that she even knew how to  _spell_ , and he’d be left blinking and speechless, trying to comprehend when she’d managed to expand her already plentiful vocabulary. So it was hardly a surprise that she was old enough for preschool now and all that entailed.

Not that that meant he was at peace with it. This was his little girl, the sweet baby he’d fed and bathed and rocked to sleep and spent sleepless nights with when that failed to work. Watching her grow independent made him proud, sure, because she was his daughter and he’d always be proud of her, but there was a not insignificant part of him that wanted her to remain a baby forever. To remain close to him and Keith forever and to never grow sick of them.

She would as she got older, no doubt. Shiro had gotten sick of his parents the more into teenagerhood he got, though he had always been able to straddle that line between moody and disrespectful rather well. He wasn’t sure if his daughter would be so successful. Not for the first time, Shiro cursed that Yumi took after Keith in that particular department because while he loved his husband dearly, he didn’t love the idea of Keith’s melancholy in a headstrong little girl blossoming into a teenager.

_But that is years away_ , Shiro reminds himself.  _Plenty of other things to worry about in the meantime_.

And, as if to prove his point, the universe drops one of those into his lap.

As he opens the car door on the passenger side, there’s a flurry of motion from the driver’s seat. Keith, still sitting where Shiro left him, startles and wipes at his eyes once with the backs of his hands. Something in his hand is knocked loose. It flutters to the floor on Shiro’s side, and the dive his husband makes to retrieve it is comically ungraceful, yet comes too late to prevent him from retrieving it himself.

It’s a photograph, and one he recognises. They took it the day they brought Yumi home. In it, they both smile tiredly, the bags under their eyes quite prominent although nowhere near how dark they look for the month after. Yumi is nothing but a bundle of blankets with a tuft of hair at the top and yet both Shiro and Keith in the picture seem unable to look away.

Of all their pictures, it is Shiro’s most favourite. Seeing it on that day? The equivalent of sleeping puppy videos.

Eyes burning with the effort to hold his own tears back, Shiro can’t resist choking out, “Did you fake an emergency work call to cry about our kid going to preschool?”

“There was a work call!” Keith replies in a voice just as wavery. He clears his throat and lowers his voice as if to hide the fact that he’d been sobbing silently while looking at a picture of their little family. “It was just quick!”

The absurdity of it evaporates the tears forming in Shiro’s eyes.

“You faked an emergency work call to cry about our kid going to preschool!” Shiro gasps a tad dramatic, getting into the car and closing the door behind him. He turns to his husband, who has flushed beet red to his hair, and swats him on the shoulder with the picture, all too aware of how uncomfortable Keith gets when not in control and put on the spot emotionally. “Unfair!”

“Not unfair!” Keith exclaims, and Shiro knows him well enough to see he's grateful for the out Shiro's given him. Snatching the photo back, he gives a sniff that’s part petulance and part the remnant of his tears. The corner of his mouth twitches as he turns the car on and pulls out of the car park, and Shiro has no time to prepare himself as Keith whispers, “Not my fault I thought of it first.”

His laughter in the face of Shiro’s indignation fills the car the whole way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Lemme know by leaving a comment or even come visit me on tumblr @damnspacebois.


End file.
